a figment of reality's imagination

Book Review – The Beast House by Richard Laymon

Special thanks to Tash who gave me her copy of the book to read.

Promising cover...

This was my third and final attempt at reading a Laymon horror, and in comparison to the previous two shockers (and I don’t mean the type that keep you awake at night) this was a whole lot better…he lives, for choice of a better term (he died in 2001 from a heart attack) another day, another book.

This was one of his earlier attempts and it seems from reading two of his later novels to date his art suffers, much like Sting who was so much better in The Police, but then became a dullard as he took scope of the world and lost his ‘powers’.

The story follows two young, and seemingly nubile (of course, familiar theme to his books) women on a road trip to locate the former lover of one of them. Through a series of (and sometimes far-fetched) incidents they end up in a small hamlet of a town where the local industry appears to be inbreeding and horrific killings. They hook up with two sexually charged young men, ex-Marines for good measure, and all fall hopelessly in love having a great time while behind their very backs people are being torn limb from limb, and skullduggery takes place around a book deal. Lost? Well you need to read it to get a sense of it, and despite me seemingly aloof take on it, it was pretty damned good. And from the point the two men entered The Beast House itself, I couldn’t put it down reading the last half-dozen chapters off. Edge of the seat stuff somewhat, and even lending itself to a sequel (it appears in doing my homework, this was the second of four novels dedicated to the ‘house’).

Worth a read, best of the three I have read so far, but as usual, and so unlike the king of horror, Stephen King, the blatant, gratuitous, and irrelevant sex-capades ruined it for me. If I wanted books to that extent, I would read Penthouse, at least there would be pictures as well.

I now have to decide which of the other two Tash has given me to read…Dark Mountain, or Island?